The two days we spent in East Boston, working on a 50′ 1974 Grand Banks – a wooden pleasure-trawler, not a sailboat, not even close – were a great investment. A customer from West Marine hired me (James) to survey the boat for most immediate projects. The list I came up with was overwhelming for him, to say the least. He, in turn, hired Dena and I to come to his boat to work before sailing Down East. He dangled large figures, trying to get us to stay and bring the boat up to cruising condition. We gave him two days. Actually, we gave him nothing. He paid us well and we did a great job. Now we have another couple months’ worth of cruising kitty. Thanks, Don! It also gave us the opportunity to surgically anchor in Piers Point Park again, just like last year. Fore and aft anchors, lots of rode but not too much, and even so, the dinghy nearly went aground as you can see in the first photo. Yesterday, James weighed the stern anchor with very little hijinks outside of something weird that was hiding in the depths of an ancient harbor. It put some significant chafe on our anchor rode. I (Dena) played with the motor to keep us off the rocks behind while he then switched to the bow anchor. An exhausting, terrible, muddy event. Four hundred years of American industry slime coated every part, and he piled it all on deck to be washed. Landing the boat in a little basin for fuel and water was simpler than it promised to be. One of my captain-teachers said never to approach a dock faster than you want to hit it. I love that rule, but there’s a corollary. Never approach so slowly that[…]
Read moreMonth: July 2015
And then we went sailing
Wessagussett is a lovely place, barring the wake created when hundreds of plastic destroyers caroom from the Fore and Town Rivers. Fourth of July weekend was topsy-turvy on the good ship Nomad. The wildlife is well-behaved for the most part. Small fish jumping, the birds didn’t shit on us, and the mosquitoes were far enough off-shore to be too exhausted to suck by the time they’d made the crossing. Even the big bugs were more cute than creepy. The underwater life was teeming, as our encrusted bottom can attest. But a good scraping and we were still able to make good time once underway. (Spoilers!) We were almost out of building materials, so I (Dena) rode my bike to the hardware store and came back with some Azek. Anyone who has seen Jaws knows there’s a knot called a sheepshank. How many know what you might use it for? Well, it makes a mighty fine tie-down when you want the pressure to be the same on both sides. Once on the boat… I made dividers for the storage shelf behind the sink and stove – a project two years in the making. The photo above shows me using the tools at hand to create nice even curves. Translated into cut pieces, they look like: The aft rail needed bases for the forward feet, and we cast them of West System 610, using Azek for the bulk. The 610 hardens exactly as you shape it, so there was some smoothing to be done after. The Dremel works so well powered by the inverter (sun power!) that we could take our time and make them right. Then, as we brought up in the last post, we started loading that rail with stuff. We made bases out of Azek. This is when we[…]
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